Childhood friends die half a mile apart on the same day from opioid overdoses

Paramedics were called to Joseph Abraham’s home, where he died of an aopiod overdose, less than an hour after his former childhood friend died of the same thing a half a mile away. (CNN)

Dustin Manning and Joseph Abraham, once friends and little league teammates, grew apart but died minutes from each other while fighting the same demons.

According to CNN, 19-year-old Manning died Friday, May 26 after taking a toxic mix of heroin and the often-deadly synthetic opioid, fentanyl. It took just 20 seconds and a small amount of the drug to kill him, parents Greg and Lisa Manning said.

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"The amount of fentanyl in his body was the equivalent of three grains of salt. That's all it took to kill a 180-lb. guy," Manning's father told CNN.

Paramedics were called to the Manning family's home in Lawrenceville, Georgia at 6:09 a.m. on reports of an unresponsive teen at the home. It was too late by the time they arrived, his father recalled.

"I had told him I'd get him up early for work, and I came up around 5:45 a.m. to wake him up, and when I opened the door, he looked like he was tying his shoes. Very quickly I realized, grabbed him and he was cold," he said.

Manning's mother was at the gym when her husband called her with the news, CNN reported.

Faces of opioid addiction in the Bronx

She added that her son may have been increasingly interested in drugs following tragic losses in his life early on.

"He lost two of his really good friends in eighth grade - one to cancer and one to a drowning. He really had a hard time. He struggled with that," she told CNN.

Manning also looked to drugs and drinking from a young age as a form of escape. According to CNN, he told his parents at 12 years old he thought he was suffering from depression.

"He told us the drugs are what gave him 'the out' and made him feel good," his mother recalled.

The Mannings and the Abraham family both looked to treatment facilities on multiple occasions for help dealing with their sons respective addictions. They were unsuccessful, however.

"Once they take (opioids), there's a switch in their brain that gets flipped on - and to get that switch flipped back could take up to five years, and most treatments are 35 days and they're back out," Manning's dad told CNN.

In the wake of their children's deaths, both sets of parents have begun attending a support group for those who have lost kids to opioids. According to CNN's report, the group grows in size month by month.

They are all outspoken advocates against the opioid crisis and have critiqued Donald Trump's recent declaration of crisis as "a small step."